First Year Writing
Our Philosophy
BSU's freshman writing program is committed to encouraging students to see writing as a lifetime practice. We hope to accomplish this by altering our students' relationship to language. We want them to see that words have power for writers--as a mode of thinking and learning--as well as for readers. We also want them to learn to think about language, including how and why it is used in certain situations.
Since English 101 and 102, the two courses at the heart of our program, are the only courses required of all BSU students, we also recognize our responsibility to promote certain academic literacies among our students. These include certain habits of mind central to inquiry in many disciplines, and an understanding of certain skills, conventions, and responsibilities that are part of membership in an academic community.
Introduction
Each year the Writing Program at Boise State University enrolls nearly five thousand students in writing courses ranging from English as a Second Language (ESL) to honors composition. Ninety percent of these students are enrolled in our freshman writing sequence, either English 101 or English 102, the two courses that represent the heart of our program. Both are required for all BSU students, and most freshmen take one or both of them their first year.
If you have any questions about the Writing Program or its courses that these Web pages don't answer, call Sherry Gropp at the Writing Program office (426-4209). She'll be happy to help you.
Assumptions
The central assumptions that inform our teaching are the following:
Students write best when they have something to say and someone to say it to.
Writing as a mode of learning and thinking is the subject of the composition course.
Grammar and mechanics are important to teach to those who need such instruction, but they are best taught in the context of students' efforts to say something meaningful to someone else.
The process of reading and the process of writing are integrally related. The development of skills in reading is connected to the development of skills in writing.
Students' attitudes towards the act of writing strongly influence the development of their writing abilities.
The development of writing ability is not a neat or a linear process. While students' writing often improves over time, advances may seem to vanish as the students face new writing tasks and challenges. Writers may be advancing in ability though their texts may not immediately show improvement.
Writing is both a private and a social act.
Writing is not merely a skill, mastered by learning certain sub-skills, but an activity of the mind that leads to the making of meaning. Teaching writing, then, involves more than instructing students in certain verbal behaviors (using semicolons, forming sentences) but engaging them in meaning-making activities--in seeing relationships, making interpretations, forming ideas.
The best pedagogy begins with where students are, emphasizing that writing is not an inherent talent but a learnable skill.
It is important to teach both process and product. The how and the what cannot be separated.
Student writers thrive in a supportive classroom environment that encourages risk-taking.
This occurs most often in a classroom where students receive frequent feedback on their work that is not always tied to a grade.
Writing instructors may be authoritative but they are rarely authoritarian. In the most productive writing classrooms, teachers balance directive and facilitative responses to their students' work, carefully negotiating two contrary roles: coach and judge.
While the philosophy and goals of the writing program should shape the practices of all its instructors, instructors also bring individual strengths to their teaching and should be free to draw on these strengths.
